OUR OPINION: Dodging debates hardly democratic

For more than 30 years, Ohio’s gubernatorial candidates stood at podiums just feet from each other and discussed the issues facing the state’s residents. They were always civil and probably never the most exciting thing on television, but the candidates were there, each and every election cycle, to take questions and offer their solutions.

But that doesn’t seem likely in the current race, where Gov. John Kasich holds a commanding lead over his challenger, Ed FitzGerald. In fact, it doesn’t seem to be a priority for many of the statewide races this campaign season as there are only a handful of occasions in the 2014 Ohio election cycle where that will occur.

That’s shameful, and it furthers the likelihood that the messages heard in this campaign will be from the candidates who have the most money to spend. Frontrunners might want to avoid debates and cling to their double-digit leads, but voters deserve to hear exchanges from both candidates on the issues.

Detractors of the standard debate format hit on two key components in their criticisms, including the lack of true exchange of ideas in scripted responses and that voters don’t benefit from hearing from weak candidates with no chance of winning.

While the practicing and coaching of candidates in debates has resulted in few surprise moments, voters need to look no further than the last presidential campaign to see how important debates can be. In the first debate, President Obama’s weak showing gave Republican nominee Mitt Romney a big push and had many pundits questioning if the president could recover. While Obama eventually won re-election, his performance in those debates was key to his campaign, and the same could be said of Romney. In fact, Romney won the GOP nomination based, in part, on his strong debate performance.

Further, there are very few moments in campaigns that aren’t scripted. Each campaign event, for the most part, is one booked with intent and the candidates are briefed and informed on the talking points they should hit upon in the appearance. Some candidates go as far as to avoid questions from the media to even further limit the spontaneity of the events. Campaign events are probably the most scripted appearances candidates do.

Finally, the idea that voters won’t be served by hearing positions on issues from weak candidates who have no chance of winning is tantamount to excluding voters whose views might align with those candidates from the process. Each election cycle, there are ideas in campaigns that don’t win, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to be heard. We’ve already essentially boiled the debates down to Democrats and Republicans, with a few third-party candidates on select occasions. Are we now left to hear no exchanges between those two parties either?

What we learn from debates goes beyond the answers the candidates offer. Differences in policy are usually easy to spot. What’s not easy to spot, outside of the debate process, is how the candidates react when face-to-face with their opponents. It’s easy to spout rhetoric when you’re in Mansfield and your opponent is in Coshocton, but saying it when you are mere feet away from the person is a true test of temerity. We also see how candidates handle questions they may not like.

We certainly appreciate the efforts of the campaigns to meet with newspapers, but ultimately it’s about letting the voters hear from those candidates. Debates take a lot of preparation and time, but they are the best chance for candidates to air their solutions to the largest number of people — ultimately what political campaigns should be about.

It’s too bad that a handful of people already made that decision for Ohioans.